Kitchen Sink Included

In response to overwhelming demand, that is, reader requests numbering in the tens (OK, OK, a few e-mails and comments), this week I’m delving back into my mother’s journals and reporter notes from the 1970s.

I think it is safe to say I will cover everything and anything, and that includes the kitchen sink; hence the title.

Hey, before I start with the old stories, let’s play “Do you remember?” for a minute.

Does anyone out there remember the short-lived Loving Pride Bakery? My friend Jeff Roy tells me that he worked there in the ‘70s and says it was on High Street. How about Central Shoe Repair on Maple Street? I only remember Picillo’s Shoe Repair on Elm Street and don’t remember them having competition, yet I’m told Central Shoe Repair was around for over 40 years.

Have any of you heard stories about the steam engines and tracks behind Friend Box on High Street? Those date back to the 1940s and ‘50s!

On to the tales from the 1970s:

• In December 1970, the Danvers Town Engineer and the city of Salem Engineer set out to re-ascertain the boundary between the two communities at Peter’s Point. The law required this to be done every five years. The boundary marker had gone missing and Barbara Liscomb dutifully reported that “no one knows if it is lost, strayed, stolen or gone with the tide.” Apparently, however, the missing marker was of no consequence since the boundaries were plainly marked on multiple maps.

My take on this is that our tax dollars were being spent on redundant tasks, and where, exactly is Peter’s Point, and more to the point, who the heck was Peter?

• At some point in the early ‘70s, was adorned with large life-like ceramic animals. Beholders enjoyed them and children were entertained. There were three green toads for kids to play leapfrog over, and a life-size blue porpoise.

Ceramic, Mom, really? Toads for leapfrog? While I well remember these beach statues, I’m 99 percent sure they were cement. Mostly I remember the monkey bars and my cousin Beverly, who while staying with us, fell off of them and broke her arm, thus necessitating one of a string of trips to the Hunt Memorial Hospital emergency room.

• Since I just mentioned the HMH emergency room, this next item carries that theme along. Mom noted that she had nothing but praise for the staff of HMH for their swift and efficient care given to accident cases. She was particularly impressed with how they cut through red-tape and didn’t leave parents “sweating it out” while little ones required emergency medical attention.

Who me? Why do you assume it was me who was one of the little ones? It could have been my cousin Bev, (see above). Although I suppose it could have also been me the time I got a second-degree burn on my hand while attempting to boil water. Yes, I have learned how to do so safely since. Or, it might have been the time I got the “LOVE” ring that a friend gave me stuck on my finger and my finger swelled to the size of a ballpark frank. But really, it might have had nothing to do with me whatsoever; there were other little ones in town.

• Case in point of another little one needing medical attention, it was reported that one Charlie Brown, age two, of Pickering Street was recuperating nicely after hospitalization for a recurrent infection. Mom thanked (in her Danvers Herald column, no less) a hospital attendant named Bill who went out of his way to befriend Charlie.

Charlie Brown wasn’t exactly the correct name of the patient. The full name was Charlie George Washington Abraham Lincoln Brown. I’d been studying presidents in second grade, you see, and yes, in case you hadn’t already guessed, CGWALB was my cat.

So, where is the kitchen sink in all this? It’s in my memory along with all of the memories of growing up in Danvers.

Many an evening, as I stood at the kitchen sink on Hobart Street, washing the supper dishes (I did too, you naysayers), I looked out at the street lights and houses and the  steeple.

I listened for the nine o’clock whistle and wondered what the future would bring. In my wildest dreams I could never have imagined that 40 years later I’d be writing for Danvers Patch, reading my Mom’s old journals and Danvers Herald columns and reliving those small, incidental moments in time and smiling, thinking of “the good old days.”